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Great phone with lots of extras

HTC S620 mobile phone provided by BT mobile

WHY DID YOU BUY THIS PHONE?

I was passing a BT stand in Derby Westfield shopping centre and asked the man about BT broadband as we were looking to change ours. He convinced me that by applying for the BT mobile which would be an extra £5 a month I would get this phone and would be able to access the internet wherever there was a BT mobile signal, in internet cafes, airports and other places away from home. As I had spent quite a lot on internet access in airports I thought this would be a good idea so I followed his advice.

WHAT DID YOU GET IN YOUR BOX FROM BT?

This was delivered in the mail and in my box apart from the actual phone; there was a mains charger, a headset, a USB sync cable, 2 rechargeable Li-On batteries, a protective carry case, instruction disk and user manual. I was also instructed to wait until the BT internet was set up with the phone and then I would be able to follow the instructions on how to sync the mobile phone with our extra phone that came with the BT internet and also get on to the internet through the mobile phone using the internet 'key'.

I can't remember the precise instructions but it must have been fairly idiot proof as I did it all pretty painlessly and it all works now.

WHAT THE PHONE LOOKS LIKE

The phone is quite large; about the same size as an i-phone or blackberry (about 100mm long by 50mm wide and 12mm thick (up to 20mm with the long life battery) and is super slim and fairly light weight. It feels quite robust with a black rubber layer on the back of the phone it feels more expensive than it is. As I said mine is black and I am not sure if they come in other colours, the cover I got with it is also black mock leather and protects it when not in use.

It has a pretty large screen, about 2.4 inches which is above a qwerty keyboard which first I wasn't sure about initially as I thought the keys would be a bit small for typing but I find so easy to text with now compared to the old fashioned 'press the number key twice for b' method and the keys seem to be fine with my fingers. When you want numbers rather than letters or any symbols in blue on the keys then these are accessed via the FN key.

My phone came with two batteries- a normal sized and a dual sized and two pack panels, a thinner and a thicker one to use depending on which battery you put in. Obviously the bigger battery lasts longer but does make the phone a bit chunkier. I think maybe if you are going to use the internet a lot the bigger one would last longer but it is a matter of preference really - the larger battery lasts twice as long as the other one.

WHAT CAN THIS PHONE DO?

CAMERA AND AUDIO:

This is not wonderful and if you like using your phone as a camera, this may not be the phone for you. The 1.3 megapixel camera is poor and I have found it does not take good quality photos so I don't use this function at all. It may be useful in a car accident for evidence or a similar situation but I would not rely on it for photos I want to keep for pleasure. The digital formats offered are MPEG-4, H.263, Motion JPEG and it will do a pretty poor video too.

The digital player supports the following formats WMA, AAC, AMR, MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, AMR, MP3 and will play pre-recorded video if you use an extra memory card or you can of course watch YouTube on the internet through the phone.

There is a built in microphone and a 3 in 1 speaker in the unit which means that the sound is loud and clear. When I have listened to music through headphones it has been very clear and I have also tried playing music through the speakers and for the size it does pack quite a decent punch.

THE DISPLAY SCREEN:

The screen as I said is quite a decent size and is an LCD display with 320 -240 pixels using 65,536 colours so it is a nice clear image and you could if you chose watch videos on this but my eyesight and patience are not up to watching anything of any length on a 2.4inch screen and as yet I have not added an SD card to my phone..

THE MEMORY:

The memory of the actual phone is pretty naff actually, but you can add a micro SD card through the card slot. The Ram on the actual phone is 64MB and the ROM 128MB. Without the addition of a micro SD card I managed to put only 20 music tracks on the phone but as yet I have not investigated an SD card as I already have an MP3 player so don't really need to use my phone to store any.

THE BATTERIES:

There were two batteries supplied with my phone both lithium polymer and one has twice the power storage capacity. According to the specs with the phone the talk time is up to 300 minutes and the standby time up to 220 hours but I'm not sure which battery this refers to. I only have to charge my phone about once a week but I don't use it that much. I did notice it went down a bit quicker when I was using the internet and games when I was in Portugal but it still was not bad.

CONNECTIONS:

There is a mini USB point and you can charge the phone through your laptop or a car charger or the mains charger which also uses the mini USB point. There is also a data port on the phone and a headphone outlet and of course the micro SD card slot. My phone also came with a USB cable, power adapter, a stereo headset/headphones to put into all these holes and slots, no micro SD card though sadly.

WHAT CAN IT DO?

With integrated Wi/Fi and Bluetooth my little phone offers all the connectivity options you need from a Smartphone. The wireless interface technical specifications are IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g and Bluetooth 2.0. Also inbuilt in the phone are GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution) which I am sure means something to those technically minded but I think GPRS means that it picks up signals to enable internet access while an EDGE delivered data services creates a broadband internet-like experience for the mobile phone user.

The phone navigation button is a jog wheel type which is a touch scroll bar on the side of the phone, or the JOGGR. It is very sensitive and I found it quite challenging and so do not use it much at all.

The smart little phone is not only able to get on to the internet but you are able to access many applications that are on a computer such as SIM Manager, Task Manager, Word Viewer, PowerPoint viewer, PDF Viewer, Excel Viewer, Windows Media Player 10 as well as a fully working version of MS office, Internet Explorer, and you can of course get other free applications uploaded from the Internet. These can be put into flight mode or switched off if necessary.

The Tasks and Calendar applications I find very useful. A neat little extra is that when the phone is set to automatic, the phone automatically turns itself onto silent when you set yourself to busy in the calendar.

The games provided are limited- Solitaire and a game called Bubble Breaker. It is quite hard work playing solitaire on the phone as you have to do it all by button pushing and I found it frustrating and I haven't tried Bubble Breaker.

SUMMARY

I am sure I've missed something but hopefully I have given you a pretty good idea of what this phone can do even if you, like me, are not especially technically minded. I have found it quite easy to explore and use. I only pay an extra £5 a month for this on top of what we pay for the landline and broadband at home so I think I got quite a bargain as i get included minutes and texts far more than I ever use as well access to internet in wi fi areas up to a specified limit.

I am very happy with my phone and all it does and would recommend one of these phones if you want a phone with QWERTY keyboard and mobile internet access at a reasonable price.

Comments

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A great phone for those wishing understand a smartphone. Not recommended for BlackBerry users.

I have had this smart phone for over a year now and overall, it's a pretty nifty piece of kit. It's not as sophisticated as other phones like this on the market, and there are some definate flaws but there are some cool things to do with it.

The memory on the phone is not good, however, there is a microSD slot. I bought a 2GB microSD and I have never come close to using all the memory. The file explorer function is good - it's like viewing the folders on your pc. The cut, copy and paste function is also timesaving - but it would be more helpful if there was a function to select multiple items.

The phone comes built in with Windows Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, which are both great applications. From the Windows Live Website, there is also a free download for MSN Messenger, engineered for this phone and OS, which is VERY useful. Custom ringtones for messages and calls can be added in .mp3 or .wav format - the only problem is that if you set a song as a text message tone, the song keeps playing until it's finished, even AFTER you've read the message. This is one of the most annoying features, but I got around this by cutting my .mp3 track short using some free sound editing software.

The phone has functions such as Bluetooth, Wi-fi and comes with Microsoft Office Mobile (Word, Excel, Powerpoint). It also comes with a program to read .pdf files but I removed this and downloaded a much more useful application to do this. Task Manager is an important function - you must close tasks when you are finished with them, as the phone becomes low on memory, much like a pc. To help quicken this process, I added task manager to my speed dial, for ease of access.

My phone came with two batteries- a normal sized and a duel sized. The phone also came with two pack panels, a thinner and a thicker one; depending on which battery you put in. I generally use the standard battery, the battery life for me is 2-3 days when my internet use is moderate. Having wi-fi on all the time drains the battery, so if I am planning to use this a lot, I use the bigger battery, which makes the phone chunkier and heavier but the battery lasts at least twice as long.

The Tasks and Calender apps are good - when the phone profile is set to automatic, the phone automatically turns itself onto silent when you set yourself to busy in the calender. The games functions are minimal - Solitare and a game called Bubble Breaker, but the main audience for this phone will generally not be interested in games. The camera and video recording are not brilliant, but better than some phones on the market.

The email synching is great - you can set your phone to automatically check for emails at a designated time period and reply easily, just like sending a text message.